Ice skating is extremely popular in the northern states of America and is growing increasingly popular in the southern states. The demands for ice skating surfaces are becoming nearly impossible to meet. Many ice rinks have to operate 24 hours a day to meet skaters' needs. The number and availability of ice skating rinks are limited by the maintenance required to keep the quality of the ice surface in an optimum or at least satisfactory condition. Such maintenance involves eliminating ruts and the like created by the skaters, removing the resulting ice particles, removing any fallen snow accumulation (in the case of an outdoor rink), and controlling the thickness of the ice.
It is important to control the thickness of the ice. The average ice thickness on an indoor ice skating rink is about 0.75 to 1.0 inch. If, for example, a person were merely to constantly shovel away the ice powder created after an ice skating session and reapply water, the ice would eventually become too thick for the ice chillers to handle and the ice would become soft and wet.
Backyard or homemade ice rinks, ponds, and lakes are called natural ice skating surfaces. They are usually created outdoors when the temperature is constantly below 25° F. Natural ice skating surfaces rely on cold air temperatures to keep the surface frozen. Even in colder climates, ice skating surfaces cannot have thick ice because they are hard to keep frozen. Natural ice skating surfaces also have the disadvantage of not having protection from snowfall.
Typically these smaller rinks are maintained manually, by one or more persons using hand tools, such as a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a hose, and a T-shaped squeegee-like implement. This not only tends to be burdensome, labor intensive, energy-depleting, and slow, but it also may produce an uneven, unduly thick, and/or poor quality surface. As a practical matter, the long term result of these deficiencies is likely to be that the ice surface is resurfaced with insufficient frequency. Manual maintenance also requires fairly large quantities of water, and sometimes creates fog which can be a problem in enclosed rinks. As a member of a neighborhood recreation association having a 7,000 sq. ft. indoor ice skating rink, I have had personal experience in hand shoveling and resurfacing and the attending disadvantages thereof. That experience led to the present invention.
Large ice resurfacing machines such as those sold under the trademark Zamboni® or Olympia® have been used for many years for large rinks, for example regulation hockey rinks having regulation dimensions of 200 ft.×85 ft. and other rinks having an area of 19,000 to 20,000 sq. ft. These large machines are excellent for large rinks, but their initial expense, size, complexity, training, maintenance, and storage requirements render them less suitable for medium and small size rinks, such as those operated by homeowners, municipalities, recreation associations, parks, private establishments, and the like. In 2005 such machines of one manufacturer had a selling price in the lower $70,000 range and weighed in excess of 9,000 pounds. Also, their size limits their turning radius and maneuverability and often requires a separate building for storage. In addition, they are complex, requiring considerable skilled maintenance and operator training. Certification of an operator of one of these machines requires that he or she attend a 3-day training course. More recently, downsized versions of these machines such as the Zamboni® Model 100 and the Olympia 250® have become available, but aside from their size and weight these have many of the same shortcomings.
The Zamboni® and Olympia® and various other machines shave off a surface ice layer of a sufficient depth, which can be as much as ⅛ inch, to remove substantially all of the ruts, and then deposit water on the resulting rut-free substrate so as to create an entirely new layer of fresh ice on the substrate. The shaving produces a rather large quantity of ice particles or “snow”, which is carried away by conveyors in the machine, stored in a snow box in the machine, and later disposed of as waste.
There has been a long-felt but unmet need for an ice resurfacing machine which has the following attributes and capabilities: relatively low initial cost; compact; easily maneuverable; short turning radius; easy to maintain and repair with standard parts; operator friendly; minimum water requirements; minimum snow disposal requirements; fast; adjustable; flexible, with ice thickness reduction capability and heavy snow removal capability; providing high quality ice surfaces; suitable for ice skating rinks of any size, including small and medium size rinks; and suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.